Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Nicaragua:Who is building the canal?And why Do Guatemala's British Ambasadors Sarah Dickson And Chris Cambpell Promote A Chinese Canal(And Environmental Disaster) ? ?

Nicaragua:Who is building the canal?And why Do Guatemala's British Ambasadors Sarah Dickson And Chris Cambpell Promote A Chinese Canal(And Environmental Disaster) ? ?

Members of a local family at a makeshift camp by the beach tell us Chinese and Nicaraguan surveyors were here a couple of months earlier with armed escorts from the army. They used lasers and GPS devices to measure buildings, paths, gardens and farmland and warned residents they would soon have to move.....Despite protests, Chinese surveyors have measured up the land and in the next few months, HKND is expected to announce compensation packages for those whose lives will be turned upside down....- theguardian.com

Nicaragua: British Ambassador Interest in Grand Canal

The project is to be presented to businessmen and investors in London in order to strengthen trade relations with Britain.

Monday, April 28, 2014

With the purpose of presenting the interoceanic canal project to British businessmen and promote Nicaragua to various companies, Paul Oquist, Secretary of Public Policy of the presidency, will be presenting the Nicaragua canal project in London over for four days from Monday, explained Chris Cambpell, UK ambassador to Nicaragua.

"The hope is that this project will increase relations with Nicaragua, beyond the canal project ... Some of the industries that may be interested in Nicaragua belong to the oil sector, manufacturing of currency notes and tax papers. On the other side, the UK might be interested in food products such as coffee and shrimp, as well as raw materials." the Ambassador commented to Elpais.com .

"Nicaragua will also be among the countries that the British ambassadors in Central America will promote in the second half of May, when the regions advantages will be presented to investors from the north of the UK, said the diplomat."........

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

UK Entrepreneurs are considering whether to invest in the inter-oceanic corridor project in Guatemala.

According to statements (confirmed by CentralAmericaData.COM) by the British Ambassador in Guatemala, Sarah Dickson, "British companies are going to see the opportunities offered by connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic in this way." The project "is very much in line with our G8 presidency (Germany, Canada, the USA, France, Italy, Japan, the UK and Russia), it is a way to use global trade and we are very interested. "

20 de ene. de 2015 - A Chinese-run canal through Nicaragua would have significant ..... Searches for HKND on Google Maps led to a central Hong Kong office tower, ... One, registered in the British Virgin Islands, manages private jets; another ...

In an era of breathtaking, earth-changing engineering projects, this has been billed as the biggest of them all. Three times as long and almost twice as deep as its rival in Panama, Nicaragua’s channel will require the removal of more than 4.5bn cubic metres of earth – enough to bury the entire island of Manhattan up to the 21st floor of the Empire State Building. It will also swamp the economy, society and environment of one of Latin America’s poorest and most sparsely populated countries. Senior officials compare the scale of change to that brought by the arrival of the first colonisers.

“It’s like when the Spanish came here, they brought a new culture. The same is coming with the canal,” said Manuel Coronel Kautz, the garrulous head of the canal authority. “It is very difficult to see what will happen later – just as it was difficult for the indigenous people to imagine what would happen when they saw the first [European] boats.”

For the native Americans, of course, that first glimpse of Spanish caravels was the beginning of an apocalypse. Columbus’s ships were soon followed by waves ofconquistadores whose feuding, disease and hunger for gold and slaves led to the annihilation of many indigenous populations.

It’s like when the Spanish came here, they brought a new culture. The same is coming with the canal

Manuel Coronel Kautz

The Nicaraguan government, by contrast, hopes the canal can finally achieve the Sandinista dream of eradicating poverty. In return for a concession to the Chinese company HKND, it hopes for billions of dollars of investment, tens of thousands of jobs and, eventually, a stable source of national income.

First, however, the project has to be built. Since the days of the first Spanish colonisers, there have been more than 70 proposals to construct a route across this stretch of the Central American isthmus. Blueprints have been sketched out by British, US and French engineers. Almost all have remained on the drawing board.

But this time work is already under way. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 22 December. Over the next five years, engineers will build a 30-metre-deep, 178-mile, fenced waterway which, if finished (and there must always be doubts for a project of this size and cost), will change the lives of millions and the wildlife of a continent.

Despite protests, Chinese surveyors have measured up the land and in the next few months, HKND is expected to announce compensation packages for those whose lives will be turned upside down.

On the ground, there is widespread unease about what this mega-project will mean for people and their homes, wildlife and ecosystems. Will it bring wealth and growth or confusion and destruction? To get a sense of the mood as this latest tidal wave of global development approaches, the Guardian travelled across the country, as closely as possible to the proposed route, to ask ordinary Nicaraguans what the canal would mean for them.

Brito – the journey begins

The journey starts where the canal will begin: at Brito, on a stretch of Pacific coastline where the only visible inhabitants are half a dozen children who spring out from their forest home to dash across the flats, hurdle the breakers and splash amid the surf.

Until recently, this three-mile beach was little known. There is no mention of Brito in my guidebook. Preparing for the trip, I was told it was marshland, that there were no roads, that it was uninhabited.

But that is about to change in spectacular fashion. In the coming months, dredgers will deepen the bay, construction firms will lay concrete roads through the forest and a wharf will be constructed on the beach to land the giant excavators and trucks that will be shipped in from the US, Australia and China.

Once this bridgehead is completed, Brito will become the operations hub, expanding into a deep sea port, a free-trade zone and ultimately, officials say, the second biggest city in Nicaragua.

Such a future is hard to imagine as our 4x4 bumps along a rutted track towards the beach. We have to splash through the Brito river and rev up a muddy bank to reach our destination. Over the final stretch, the only people we pass are acampesino on a horse and a couple of foragers.

But this path is increasingly well-travelled. Members of a local family at a makeshift camp by the beach tell us Chinese and Nicaraguan surveyors were here a couple of months earlier with armed escorts from the army. They used lasers and GPS devices to measure buildings, paths, gardens and farmland and warned residents they would soon have to move.

This place is safe. We all know each other here. Who knows where they are going to move us

Juan Félipe Cárdenas: ‘The Chinese say we have to leave.’ Photograph: Jonathan Watts for the Guardian

“We have to leave. That’s what the Chinese say. We can’t be here in 2015 because they’re going to be here with their machines,” says Juan Félipe Cárdenas, who sits bare-chested on the sand as his words contend with the crashing waves. “It’s a serious problem. Where are we going to go?”

It’s a common refrain. The loudest criticism of the canal is that it is being rushed through without proper consultation or transparency. Although it is the biggest project in Nicaragua’s history, parliament has had only two days to debate the law granting the concession. The social and environmental impact assessments – still being carried out by London-based Environmental Resource Management on behalf of HKND – are also being pushed through with undue haste, say critics......

Who is building the canal?

For the company behind one of history’s biggest engineering projects – a 178-mile inter-ocean canal through Nicaragua – the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co (HKND) is difficult to track down.

While HKND’s website includes a contact form, it lacks an address or phone number. Its home page is bare bones, cycling through images of a shipping port, Hong Kong’s skyline, a tropical beach, and the words “the century-old dream will come true” written in dark blue letters against a clear blue sky.

When the company did not immediately reply to an interview request, the Guardian attempted to track down its Hong Kong office. Searches for HKND on Google Maps led to a central Hong Kong office tower, where the company was not listed as an occupant. Hong Kong direct inquiries could not find a listing.

Little is known about Wang Jing, HKND’s billionaire chairman. Four years ago, the 41-year-old took control of Beijing Xinwei, a major telecommunications company; the HKND website says he “serves as board chairman of more than 20 enterprises which operate businesses in 35 countries around the world”. One, registered in the British Virgin Islands, manages private jets; another manages mines in Cambodia.

While a HKND public relations manager did eventually reply to the interview request, subsequent emails were ignored.

The Nicaraguan newspaper Confidencial has reported that HKND is in fact a web of 15 separate holding companies, based in Beijing, Hong Kong, the Caiman Islands, the Netherlands and Nicaragua. Wang says he has spent more than $100m of his own money on the project; while he claims to have attracted numerous outside investors, their identities remain unknown.

Overseas newspapers have accused Wang of acting as an agent of China’s government or military, which he fervently rejects.

The Chinese government has denied any involvement in the canal project “I know you don’t believe me,” Wang told Reuters in May. “You believe there are people from the Chinese government in the background providing support. Why, in the end, is only Wang Jing out front?”

Wang said that his father was an office worker who died of illness in 2010; his 70-year-old mother is retired. He studied at the Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine but did not graduate. He has one daughter.

“I was born in December 1972 in Beijing,” Wang told the newswire. “All these years I’ve lived a very ordinary life.”

26 de dic. de 2014 - So far the company, the HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co ... "If the Chinese government is behind this project, it has to be responsible ... LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 02: Millie Mackintosh attends the ...

3 de jul. de 2013 - Man behind Nicaragua's canal project is as dodgy as they come. ... The concierge refused to confirm whether HK Nicaragua Canal .... In 2009 he gained a MA (merits) in Spanish American Studies (King's College London).

26 de oct. de 2014 - Plans for Nicaraguan canal which would dwarf its Panama rival and dissect ... “This is one of the most fertile regions in Nicaragua, and the government has sold it behind our backs to the ... Wang Jing and his Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. .... HOME · News · UK News · Politics.

20 de oct. de 2014 - The HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. estimates it can complete ... to speculation that the Chinese government is behind the project. ... by a private Chinese company is similar to the pattern that led the British ...

They resent the British modification of the note, for, as they say, some power or .....Sarah Frances, widow of James I. Nesmith, died at her home Friday, after an ... and to the lato Thomas Dickson, the well known coal operator, formerly of the .... of theNicaragua Canal by causing Costa Rica i and Nicaragua to renounce the ...

Nicaragua will host Ibero-American meeting on renewable energy ..... Britishcompanies evaluate to invest in Guatemala interoceanic canal ... the global trade, said the Ambassador of the United Kingdom in Guatemala, Sarah Dickson.